SAINT NICHOLAS IN EUROPE
There is no country in Europe where Saint Nicholas is more honored than
in Holland. Even before his festival arrives--during all the first five
days of December--the shops in town and city put on their most festive
array. All the people in shop and street assume a brisk and bustling
air. Dutch men and Dutch women, usually silent and stolid, hail one
another with noisy greetings as they meet. Everybody, in short, has his
best foot foremost.
Amsterdam, one of many cities which claim Saint Nicholas as their
patron saint, is especially wideawake. During the first week of
December the confectioners’ shops are ablaze with all sorts of
splendors in cake and candy. Sugar rabbits, sugar cats and sugar
mice disport themselves amid scenery of sugar and chocolate and wood
shavings. The shavings (painted a vivid green), supply the foliage
for chocolate trees and candied fruits. In all shapes and sizes are
figures of men and women made out of crisp brown gingerbread, called
Saint Nicholas cake, which is specially prepared for the holiday. These
figures are sometimes known as “sweethearts” and it is a merry jest
to send a girl figure to a boy and a boy figure to a girl. Nay the
elders themselves are not forgotten if they are unmarried. It is good
fun, we are told, to have a servant burst into a roomful of people and
say to the lady of the house:
[Illustration: Mute admiration.
By Raymond Potter.]
“If you please ma’am, here is Miss Annie’s sweetheart,” and hand over
to mamma a gingerbread man for her little girl.[6]
Other jokes of the same kind are played with so-called “hearts,” large
and luscious pieces of march-pane moulded into the familiar shape
supposed to resemble the organ that is supposed to be the seat of
human affection. These are exchanged among the young people much as
valentines, with us, are exchanged on February 14th.
“Of course,” says the authority I have already quoted, a lady of
Holland birth who speaks of what she herself has seen and experienced,
“most girls like having such an innocent heart sent to them, and it is
funny to see the mysterious look with which one tells another:
“‘I had a large heart sent to me last night. I cannot possibly think
who sent it.’”
Here and there in the streets you will see groups of boys and girls
clustered around a linen-draper’s shop. For it is the linen drapers who
especially love to display in their windows a life-like image of Saint
Nicholas, ruddy-faced, white-bearded, crowned with his mitre and clad
in his bright red robe lined with soft white fur, bearing a crozier in
his hand, and mounted on a fiery white horse. Behind him stands his
negro servant Jan, or John.
On December 5th, the eve of the saint’s feast, he is said to ride over
the roofs of the houses, dropping candies into the wide chimneys. And
indeed, in houses where children believe this, their faith is rewarded
by the fact that candies and other goodies do stream down into the
great open hearths and are gathered in by eager little people who have
been singing the saint’s praises all through the evening.
In many households, moreover, the saint actually presents himself to
the eyes of his worshippers and admirers. A knock is heard at the door;
it is opened, and amid the breathless silence of the children, Santa
Klaus, in flesh and blood, and in all the glory of scarlet robe and
bejewelled mitre, steps into the room. He is closely followed by his
servant Jan, who bears a basket containing all sorts of presents for
the good children, and all sorts of unpleasant reminders for the bad
ones.
[Illustration: Santa Claus comes to grief on an automobile.
Copyright 1908 by Life Publishing Company.]
Before these things are distributed, Santa Klaus calls up the children
one by one. He praises the good ones for all the kind deeds they have
done during the past year, while gently reproving any faults which
may have mingled with their virtues. To the bad ones he is stern but
just. He reminds them of their misdeeds, and tells them that he cannot
give them any presents until they improve. If they have been very, very
bad, he hands a birch-rod over to their parents with the advice that it
should be used upon their little backs in the task of reformation.
Great is the wonder that Santa Klaus should know so much about the
children in a whole neighborhood. He goes, or is supposed to go, from
house to house in the course of the day, and everywhere he praises the
virtues or condemns the faults of the boys and girls arrayed to meet
him. Sometimes it is found, by comparing notes, that he was in two or
more houses at the same time.
Of course, you who have had your eyes opened, guess that the part of
Santa Klaus is taken by some older member of each family, who confines
his visits to his own circle of relatives. Except in very small
villages, there are many Santa Klauses, therefore, going the rounds on
Saint Nicholas’s day, each well acquainted in the houses he visits.
In Austria, also, and in many parts of Southern Germany, St. Nicholas
Eve is made memorable in every nursery by a visit from the saint. A
well grown boy with a quick and clever mind and some knowledge of
church doctrine, is chosen to play the part of Santa Klaus. He is
masked in long white vestments. A silk scarf is wound around his neck,
a mitre crowns his head, a crozier is put in his hand. He is attended
by two angels and a whole troop of devils.
The angels are dressed much like the choir boys you have seen in
Catholic and Episcopalian churches, save that they also wear silken
scarfs around their necks. Each carries a basket.
The devils blacken their faces, put horns upon their heads and decorate
their faces with pig’s snouts or any other grotesque device that may
suggest itself to their fancy. All are girt with chains, which they
shake or rattle furiously.
Boy-like, it is thought much better fun to play devil than angel, and
any boy who can lay his hands upon a suitable costume is at liberty to
join the infernal train.
Late in the afternoon of December 5th the Boy-bishop and his attendants
begin their round of visits. It is the season for young folks’ parties,
and all the children of the village who are not masquerading as bishop
or angel or imp have gathered together in a few of the principal
houses. At each Saint Nicholas calls in its due turn.
He enters with the two angels, leaving the demons outside to indulge in
any pranks they will.
[Illustration: No, I don’t believe in you any more, but you may leave
the things.
Drawing by J. R. Shaver.
Copyright 1908 by Life Publishing Co.]
A great hush falls upon the assembled children as the Saint advances
into the room. One by one he calls them up to examine them. Simple
questions suited to their various ages are put to them by the bishop,
after which each has to repeat a hymn or a prayer. All this part of
the evening’s business is carried on with the greatest seriousness and
decorum on the part of children and grown-ups alike.
If the child passes a satisfactory examination the angels present it
with nuts and apples--if not it has to stand aside. When the last of
the examinations is over, the devils are admitted into the room.
They are not allowed to come near the good children, but they may tease
and frighten the naughty little boys and girls as much as they choose.
They delight in strange dances, and in all sorts of odd antics, such
as smearing the girls’ faces with lamp-black, or putting coal dust and
ashes down the backs of the boys.
When Saint Nicholas has left, the children return to their own homes.
Before going to bed they hang up their stockings by the chimney or,
more likely, place their little boots and shoes close to the hearth,
expecting to find them filled with gifts in the morning.
Boots and shoes indeed, came before stockings almost everywhere, the
advantages of clean stockings as receivers for candies and other
eatables being a comparatively new discovery. In Belgium to this day
the children give their shoes an extra fine polish on Christmas Eve,
fill them with hay, oats, carrots, for Santa Klaus’s white horse, and
put them on the table, or set them in the fireplace. The room is then
carefully closed and the door is locked.
In the morning a strange thing is found to have happened! The furniture
is all turned topsy-turvy, the fodder has been removed from the shoes
and in its place the good little children find all sorts of nice things
and the bad ones only rods of birch and bits of coal.
Boots and shoes are also in use in many parts of France. But here,
as a general rule, it is the good little Jesus (le bon petit Jesus)
who comes down the chimney to fill all this footgear with sweetmeats.
Formerly this custom extended to Paris. A French journalist named
Charton thus describes the sights that met his eye on Christmas eve in
Paris in the middle of the nineteenth century:
[Illustration: Santa Claus: “Whew! I suppose if I don’t remember those
poor boys in Wall Street they’ll complain to Teddy.”
Drawing by C. J. Taylor.]
“Lo! what a strange thing! Before all the mantelpieces of Paris are
ranged, with a wonderful symmetry, charming little shoes, pretty
little _bottines_, miniature slippers, and, as the extremities of the
_faubourgs_, poor little sabots! It will be asked, what all those tiny
little boots and shoes are doing there? There are enough of them to
cover the feet of all the inhabitants of the vast kingdom of Lilliput.
What are they doing there? They are waiting for a beautiful little
luminous hand to descend from heaven to fill them with preserved fruits
and bonbons! In the olden time the presents intended for children were
fastened to the two ends of the Yule Log. Later an attempt was made to
introduce into France the Christmas tree, which, in a large portion
of Europe, has superseded the Yule Log. But it is most usual to keep
to the simple custom of filling the little shoes with bonbons, which
more than one mother of the laboring classes has had the foresight
to reserve for that purpose. We will not venture to say that, whilst
the good mother or the elder sister is stealthily approaching the
hearth and stooping down, one of the little sleepers, kept awake with
expectation, does not open his eyelids slily, and say to himself: ‘Ah!
I was sure it was not the little Jesus!’ But the prudent child will
take care not to confess that he has discovered the mystery; he has
too much interest in being cheated next Christmas day; and in a few
hours the room will ring with his cries of false surprise but real
gratification.”
Only candies and sweetmeats, you will see, were brought down through
the chimney by the Christ-child on Christmas eve. The favorite time for
gift-making from parent to child, from child to parent, from friend to
friend, was on New Year’s Day. Hence that holiday is known as “Le Jour
des Étrennes” (the day of presents), “étrennes” being a corruption of
the Latin word “strenae,” the gifts exchanged during the Saturnalia,
about which I have written in the fourth chapter of this book.
Though Saint Nicholas is honored as the patron of children in nearly
all the Catholic countries of continental Europe, he is rarely
associated in any way with Christmas. That day is there held sacred to
the Christ-child alone. In a very few localities Saint Nicholas may
appear on his own day to find out what good little boys and girls would
like to have on Christmas, or, sometimes, at New Year’s, but it is
generally the little Jesus who is the actual gift bringer.
In the Catholic portions of Austria and Germany all of the windows are
lit up on the night of December 24 so as to enable Him to pick His way
from house to house. Here you may again recognize a lingering memory of
the Pagan and Jewish festivals wherein lighted torches, or lamps, or
candles form a chief feature.
[Illustration: Santa Claus up in a balloon.
Copyright 1908 by Life Publishing Co.]
And, indeed, one may point out right here that the Christ-child
supplies another link with the old pagan Silenus. The latter, as I have
told you, was, among other things, the guardian and tutor of the infant
Bacchus. Whenever picture or statue represented him in this capacity
all his evil traits were dropped. He became a very different being
from the graceless reveller of the Bacchanalian feasts. He was now
painted or carved as an old man, grave and sober, clean-cut in limbs
and features, holding little Bacchus in his arms or on his shoulders.
Possibly this figure may have suggested the mediæval legend of Saint
Christopher, who, it is fabled, bore the Christ-child on his shoulders
across a river in Germany.
In Italy almost every church has an altar dedicated to the Christ-child
and decorated with a wooden or waxen effigy known as “Il Bambino,” or
“the babe.” On Christmas day this Bambino is specially honored by being
dressed up in his finest clothes and placed in a mimic cradle, called
a presepio. All good Catholics flock to do the image honor during the
twelve days from Christmas to Epiphany.
The most famous Bambino in Italy is that in the Franciscan church of
Ara Cœli at Rome, which is believed to heal the sick and perform other
miracles. On Christmas day a curious ceremony is performed in his honor
which makes our thoughts travel back to the Boy-bishop of old England
and elsewhere. Opposite the presepio in which the little waxen figure
reposes is built a palco, or platform, and on this platform a number of
baby orators follow one another with little speeches, written by their
elders, that dwell upon the birth of our Lord and the incidents of His
childhood.